Grooming your home to sell

Grooming your home to sell

When it comes to selling your home, you must remember that lots of people are going to come looking at your place. Here are a few tips that you can keep in mind when getting your place ready to sell.

• Keep the pets out of sight as much as possible, and make sure there are no signs of pets having been in the house. Some people don’t like pets in the house at all. Remember that pets do have odours, so be sure that your house is odour free.
• A coat of paint will make the house look great.
• If you smoke, stop smoking in the house and get rid of the smell of smoke in the house. Most people today don’t smoke, and a house that smells of ashtrays is a put – off.
• Remove all the clutter from the rooms. Seeing as you’re going to be moving out soon, it will be a good idea to start packing away all those little things that you have collected over the years, and getting rid of all the clutter will make your house more presentable. It will also help prospective buyers see how their own furniture might look in the house.
• Remove any fixtures that you might want to take with you when you move from the house and replace them with good quality parts. For example, if you want to take the chandelier in your living room, replace it with a good quality piece. This will eliminate problems later when the buyer might lay claim to the fixture as part of the house. A new fitting will also show up as new, and will make the house presentable.
• Keep your sidewalk and the garden as neat and tidy as the house. For some buyers, the garden is as important as the house, and an unkempt garden will be a drawback.
• Minimize personal items such as family photos. You want the prospective buyer to see themselves living in the house, and removing your personal photographs will help them with this.
• Ask your estate agent to do a critical walk – through and inspection of your home to see if they can pick up any details that you might have missed.
• If the value of your house deserves it, consider hiring a professional stager to come in and get your house ready to sell.

Lots of luck with selling your home!

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Insulation Revisited

Insulation Revisited

If you live in an area that receives some frost, here is an easy way for you to see just how well your home is insulated.

Check the top of your roof for frost in the morning, and compare it to the houses in your area. If there is frost on the lawn, there should be frost on the roof too. However, a badly insulated ceiling will let a lot of heat through from your house, and this will unfreeze your roof.
So if your roof is nice and white with frost on frosty mornings, the chances are you have a well insulated ceiling space and all the heat is staying inside your house.
If your roof is clear of frost on frosty mornings it means your heat is escaping from the house into the roof and heating up the tiles enough for the frost to disappear. In that case, it’s time to call the insulating people.

But that is not the end of the story. Even if your house is well insulated, you can look for patches on your roof where there is no frost. This will indicate where you have a heat leak. Typically, this will be right above a trapdoor. By sealing up those leaks, you can get your house to be a lot warmer without blowing the bank.
And of course if you have air conditioning, this winter exercise will save you a load of cash when summer comes along and your new insulating stops the cold air from escaping from your house.

I hope this helps you to have a cosy and warm winter inside.

And there are lots more tips available on my website at http://www.sahometalk.com/index.php